“What hurts the victim most is not the cruelty of the

oppressor but the silence of the bystander”. Elie Weisel!

This is an appeal to the people of good will all over the world for justice in Punjab (the Sikh Homeland) which is virtually an occupied territory and subjected to tyranny and oppression.

“In the name of curbing terrorism unabashed state terrorism has been unleashed on the Sikhs branding them as criminals, arbitrary arrests and McCarthy style witch hunt, sadistic torture and cold blooded shooting of young men in false encounters, are common occurrences….”2.

“Today, it is the State itself which openly indulges not only in murder and assault, but also in inhuman torture, molestation of women”3,

Four decades ago the U.N. Charter (1945) enshrined “the faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of human person, in equal rights of men and women and nations large and small.” To reinforce that faith, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) inscribed, inter alia, the following principles:

“Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world:

“Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind, and the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people:

“Whereas it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression that human rights should be protected by the rule of law”,

This historic Declaration, also known as Magna Cart a of Human Rights, laid down the conceptual foundations for a global vision, a global ideology and a global culture of peace and harmony where rights of all members of the human family would be respected. It was the dream of a world where right and not might shall win, where justice and truth shall not be buried under the heap of misinformation and distortion manufactured in many state factories and transmitted across the continents through global satellites; where the fascist mentality still dominant in many countries shall not be able to hide human genocide behind the facade of cultural festivals; where distinct cultural minorities shall not become disposable commodities to satisfy the ruling dynasties’ insatiable greed for power; and where Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s following observations will be engraved on the constitutional pillars of the nations:

“Nationalities are the wealth of humanity, they are its crystallized personalities; even the smallest among them has its own special colors, hides within itself a particular facet of God’s design”.

The Sikhs’ struggle for retrieving their distinct national status, which was lost during the partition fiasco of 1947, is almost four decades old. However, two tragic events: “Operation Blue Star” (the bloody army assault on the Golden Temple Complex in June 1984) and “Operation Genocide” (the avenge wave of mass murder by lynching and burning alive, looting and arson directed at the Sikhs after the assassination of Mrs. Gandhi in November 1984) have inflicted a deep wound in the psyche of the Sikh people. The fact that not a single case has been registered against the terror gang is all the more disturbing. Many high officials of the ruling Congress (I) Party, who have been identified in many fact finding reports for having engineered the massacre of the Sikhs, are still occupying official positions indeed, many human rights advocates, who have compiled and published eyewitness accounts of this carnage, are being intimidated, harassed and charged with “sedition” by the law enforcement agencies.

All attempts by the International Committee for Red Cross and Amnesty International to go to India were rebuffed. Similar requests by five U.S. Congressmen and ten Members of the British Parliament to go to India on a fact-finding mission were not granted.

After a sustained pressure from home and abroad, a commission of inquiry was reluctantly established by Rajiv Gandhi, six months after the carnage (in April 1985), hoping that much of the evidence would be missing or lost. Rajiv Gandhi’s government even tried “to suppress the findings” of the commission (which contains more than 4,000 affidavits and eyewitness accounts of savage wave of mass murder, lynching, rape, looting and arson directed at the Sikhs), justifying this cover-up “in public interest”.6 Some sections of the press and human rights groups have protested against this suppression of the commission’s report. The following excerpts from a protest note by Manushi( A Journal about Women and Society) are pertinent:

“The government has banned the press from reporting the proceedings of the Misra Commission, set up to. enquire into the anti-Sikh riots of November 1984. We feel that this undemocratic step can only further the suppression of truth. Already, many witnesses have alleged that the police have been harassing them to prevent them from testifying before the commission. The ban on press reporting amounts to denying us, the people of this country, our fundamental rights to information about the way this country is being run…

“The fundamental right to freedom of expression guaranteed by the Constitution of India necessarily includes the right to know, to enquire, to acquire information and to exchange ideas.”7

While the civilized nations are feeling the shame of Nazi holocaust, they are slowly but painfully aware of the genocide of the Sikhs, right in their own homeland. In this time of grief, we, the Sikh people with tears in our eyes and prayers on our lips are being sustained by our deep faith in the ultimate triumph of justice and truth. In this context, Anthony Lewis’ observation about the Jewish plight in Nazi Germany is noteworthy:

“They were sustained by the faith that one day the human spirit would prevail, that mankind would see the evil for what it was and condemn it forever. Historic struggles against injustice and tyranny have seldom been won by the oppressed alone. More often. Than not, the emergence of broader coalitions or countervailing forces have sustained such struggles. It is only through increase no international awareness, and some kind of global solidarity of human rights groups that can stop what a fact-finding report has described as:

“An undeclared, unilateral ruthless war against hundreds of innocent defenseless men and women in faraway tiny villages of Punjab from where their voices do not reach the rest of India.”

Article extracted from this publication >>  August 28, 1987